Media conference 2018: Face it!

On so many levels, we have been forced to integrate the unprecedented in our worldview over the last few years. But instead of facing the uncomfortable reality, we deny the scope of the change and stick to established, gradual mechanisms of policy making (e.g. in Germany) or retreat to national frames – two strategies equally useless. Ultimately we lack the sense of urgency needed in this historic moment.

Journalism beyond denial and ideology

How do we, journalists, live up to the challenge of facing these changes and of perceiving and confronting them? How do we – in the eye of the hurricane – find our role and provide the informational basis that society needs to adapt or react?

How do journalists in a society as deeply polarised as Poland, for example, regain the ability to get through to the real problems – maybe by leaving aside the old battles and concentrating on the ones worth fighting?

How do we understand and define our own role and positions on some of the most divisive questions currently discussed in Europe?

Over 160 journalists, activists, and academics met in Warsaw to discuss the biggest challenges that journalism faces today and look at the problems in the four Visegrad countries.